Scribes of Gastronomy: Representations of Food and Drink in Imperial Chinese Literature

1. Food and the Literati

1 Food and the Literati The Gastronomic Discourse of Imperial Chinese Literature SiufuTang and IsaacYue It has been observed that while all other life feeds, the human species eats.1 The act of ‘eating’, which distinguishes humans from other forms of life, has brought about the phenomenon of different cultures pursuing dissimilar diets and having distinctive ways of preparing food. Since for each culture, food is symbolic in a unique way, the study of one’s cultural gastronomical practices enables an introspective examination of one’s own cultural traditions as well as facilitates the understanding of other cultures around the world. The Chinese take pride in their food culture and the fact that their ethnical culinary excellence is recognized internationally. To quote the late Chang Kwangchih , ‘That Chinese cuisine is the greatest in the world is highly debatable and is essentially irrelevant. But few can take exception to the statement that few other cultures are as food oriented as the Chinese.’2 In fact, not only does gastronomy occupy a central role in the development of Chinese civilization, it also represents a theme of some importance in literary productions, with the language of food manifesting itself in multifarious ways throughout different eras, serving a variety of purposes, and encompassing genres. Examples can be as far-ranging as the stanzas on food and wine in the Classic of Poetry (Shi jing 娑䴻) or in Su Shi’s 喯度ġ(1037–1101) enunciation of the attainment of culinary perfection, and the articulation of the refinement of dining in The Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng 䲭㦻⣊). From these literatures, it is possible to extract different layers of interpretation in respect to the references to food, ranging from the historic to the aesthetic. As Roel Sterckx observes, ‘food is omnipresent in reality, in simile and in metaphor [of China]’.3 The unique appeal of food and its special cultural significance within Chinese society cannot be underestimated. The purpose of this present volume is to engage the fledging genre of food literature in global academia from a Chinese perspective. By considering the textual representations of food in relation to the agendas of the writers, the type of text in which they appear, and the context under which nourishment is evoked as a literary motif, the contributors to this project hope to add to the understanding of the cultural and social significance of food in the Chinese literary tradition. 2 Scribes of Gastronomy Food, Moral Education, and the Way of the Taotie Whereas the English lexicon contains words such as gourmet, aristologist, gourmand, epicure, and gastrologer to describe a person who is acquainted with the fine art of dining, in Chinese this person would be referred to as a laotao 侩 棽, a derivative of the mythical taotie 棽棖. As a beast of legend, the nature and the origin of the taotie continue to be a subject of scholarly debate.4 Traditionally, the taotie has been associated with a beast-like motif on ritual vessels on the one hand, and with voracious appetite on the other. Such an association was made as early as in the Spring and Autumn Annals of Lü (Lüshi chunqiu ⎽㮷㗍䥳):5 The taotie that is inscribed on the tripods of the Zhou dynasty has a head but not a body. It devours people but does not swallow them, and damages its own body as a result. This demonstrates retribution. It is the same for those who do immoral acts. ␐溶叿棽棖炻㚱椾䃉幓炻梇Ṣ㛒⑥炻⭛⍲℞幓炻ẍ妨⟙㚜ḇˤ䁢ᶵ┬Ṏ䃞ˤ6 Three elements of the passage are worthy of our attention. First, the passage mentions the tripod of the Zhou dynasty, which is an important ritual vessel. In early China, rites (li 䥖) were originally performed as sacrifices to gods and ancestors and later became governing norms for social and political life as well. Ever since the elaboration of the concept by early Confucianism, especially in the hands of Confucius, Mencius and Xunzi, ‘rites’ has become an encompassing term for spiritual and moral norms, covering nearly every aspect of Chinese life. Second, the passage talks about eating. The mythical beast taotie eats human beings but does not swallow them, presumably choking itself out of hastiness. Eating in itself, in particular as a necessary means of life maintenance, is innocuous . However there are good and bad ways of eating. The taotie’s way of eating can be seen as wrong for two reasons. Not only does it eat human beings, but it eats them improperly by not swallowing. Such a bad way of eating thus brings about harm, not...